The A-1 Robot - This Robot is created using a Radio Shack project box. I have used many of the circuts from DiscoverCircuts. com with my ideas for Ai-A-1. __

The BEAM Stepper drive - The 74AC240 stepper driver works by alternately enabling each half of the buffer. Only one half can be enabled at a time. Let's assume that the top half of the driver is enabled. U1A & U1B along with R8, C1, and the input protection resistor R7 form a square wave oscillator. The outputs of U1A & U1B directly drive one coil of a bipolar stepper motor. __ Designed by Duane Johnson and Wilf Rigter

The D1 solar engine - Nocturnal-Controlled Solar Engine: The D1 solar engine is the original nocturnal solar engine design. The design is simple, tuneable, but no longer terribly useful (I include it here just for purposes of education and folks' historical interest). __ Designed by Wilf Rigter

The dual slope-sampling solar engine - if you had time to experiment with the ALF type SE circuit you may have discovered some of its shortcomings with regard to a Power Smart Head adaptation. The problem is that HCMOS
gates are power hungry when used as SE voltage comparators when the analog input voltage is near the CMOS
switching threshold. if an HCMOS
gate is used without sampling, the chip supply current can be as high as 70mA with the comparator input voltage near the trigger threshold (Vcc / 2). __ Designed by Wilf Rigter

The GBSE (gate boost solar engine) - The Gate Boost SE uses a 1381, a 2N7000 MOSFET and a 2N3906 with a unique voltage doubler to increase the voltage applied to the gate of the MOSFET. Normally the 2.6V output of a 1381C is barely able to turn on the 2N7000. As a result the "on resistance" of the MOSFET is high and much power is wasted. __ Designed by Wilf Rigter

The MicroPower Solar Engine - A 'micro power solar engine' has been a goal since my introduction to BEAM Robotics. I believe that if there wasn't one before, I there is one now. What i'm presenting to you looks very similar to one of the circuits found in Steven Bolt's web pages. As you will see, I made only minor changes to that design and not without help. __ Designed by Ken Huntington

The Miller popper - The 1uF timing caps should be adjusted to give the right discharge duration. The series 1N4148 diodes may not be required. For those not familiar with the photopopper and Miller SE operation, it works as follows:The main caps charges up until the voltage reaches the trigger of the 1381 which is equal to the rated trigger level plus the photodiode photovoltaic voltage (~.5V) plus the 1N4148 forward voltage (~100mV AT 5) plus the voltage drop (AT 5uA) across each leg of the 100K pot. The pot can therefore be used to match the 1381 trigger levels. The PD photovoltaic voltage is proportional to the light level. The SE whose PD has the lower light level will have a lower combined trigger level and will fire first. __ Designed by Bryan Yeung and Wilf Rigter

The Miller solar engine - The Miller solar engine uses a 1381* voltage detector (a. k. a. , a voltage supervisor) IC to drive a voltage-based (type 1) solar engine. The 1381 is normally used to reset CPUs and Micros when the power supply drops too low for reliable operation. So 1381s detect and switch when the input voltage crosses the rated upper and lower threshold voltages. The upper- and lower-switching voltages are slightly overlapped so that the turn-on voltage is a few hundred mV above the turn-off voltage. This hysteresis keeps input noise (around the switching threshold) from resulting in multiple output cycles as the transition occurs. __ Contact Eric Seale

The Millipede - Me and a friend are both trying to build a millipede. Because of obvious reasons, the millipede is NOT going to have 1000 feet! ! ! instead, it's going to have 16 pager motors as feet. it will also have 3 MicroMotors to ''bend'' towards light, and a backup sensor __ Designed by Juan A Cubillo

The NanoBot - Believe it or not, this little guy is a sumo robot. When he senses he’s found, he runs full speed for the edge of the rink! __

The Open Automation Project - Design a coherent set of modular components (hardware and software) that conform to standards (where possible) , and implement the functionality of an intelligent mobile robot. Use pre-built components that are readily available where possible (and when such pre-built components are affordable) __

The P5v2 5-motor walker - An overview of the P5v2 walker electronics by Wilf Rigter - Feb 2001 __ Designed by Wilf Rigter

The Power Smart Heads - The power smart family of head designs springs from a simple battery-powered design: __ Designed by Wifl Rigter

The PowerSmart Solar Speeder, V2 - This must be the most efficient bipolar transistor motor driver design for this application and I recommend it for the solar roller competitions. A 1381E is used to trigger at 2.4V. While it takes a total of 10 components plus motor compared to the stock circuit's 6 components, you will clearly get better performance compared to a stock Solar Roller/Speeder circuit. __ Designed by Wifl Rigter

The SC (Schmitt Comparator) Head - Circuit that results in a bot with a form of Peripheral Vision. it's a Master/Slave form of the SC-Head. The photo-diodes should be positioned across the front of the bot with the ones marked Far Left and Far Right mounted at a greater angle off center than the ones marked left and right. __ Designed by Martin Keen and Wilf Rigter

The VTSE solar engine - The VTSE uses the popular 1381 chip and that is its main advantage. The potentiometer (or two fixed resistors) connects one leg between the output and input of the 1381 and the other leg to the supply voltage. These resistors acts like a voltage divider when the SE is off and the 1381 output is low. in that case, the voltage that appears at the 1381 input is determined by the ratio of the pot or the two resistors and is usually set for 2 times rated 1381 voltage. __ Designed by Wilf Rigter

The Vx2SE solar engine - The Vx2SE is a simple discrete voltage-doubling SE for driving an LED. if the load is a red or green LED, J1 is used together with just one red or green LED for threshold detection (no 1381). For driving a blue LED use two green or red LEDs in series and may require a higher voltage (3V) solar cell. With 100uf capacitors the flash frequency is 2-3Hz and the R2 and R3 resistors may be omitted. With very large capacitors (0.01F and up) the frequency is much lower and the resistors can be optimized to stretch the LED "on" time. The Vx2 solar engines will self trigger but are also sensitive to a drop in light and will trigger from a shadow etc. __ Designed by Wilf Rigter

Three axis robot arm - Circuit for three axis robot arm based on stepper motors out of 5 1/4" drives__

Tiny Motors - Miniature motors are wonderful for B. E. A. M. robots or moving small loads. A plentiful source of inexpensive commercial motors are those used as vibrating alerts in pagers and cell phones. But how does one remove the metal offset weight? __ Contact David Cook

Tiny Robot - Recently many kind of robot contests have being opened and some interesting reports of the challenge are found on the web. The Line Following is a kind of the robot contests to vie running speed on the line. I build a tiny line following robot which can run on the desk, moving the key board aside will do. it is for only a personal toy reduced i __ Designed by The Electronic Lives Manufacturing-presented Chan

Tone Detection with the NE567 - The NE567 is a detector of tone and frequency integrated and can also be used as generator of square sign. Through external components can __

Toy Car Hack - This car measures just 5 1/2 inches in length. it was sold as a remote control car for $19.95 at Fry's Electronics here in Phoenix. Powered by 4 AAA batteries, it has a small dc motor and a very interesting steering mechanism. (08/08/08) __ Designed by Luhan Monat - Mesa Arizona

Trimming the Internal Clock on a KX8 MicroController - Example algorithms for manually or automatically tuning the oscillator on the internal clock generator of the popular MC68HC908KX8 microcontroller. Also includes batch test results and a video. __ Contact David Cook

Trimpots - A visual guide to breadboard-friendly trimpots (small variable resistors) that appear in nearly every hobbyist electronic project. The article features comparison pictures and part numbers of 3/8-inch and 1/4-inch square single-turn and multi-turn trimmers. Even more interesting is the cutaway close-up photographs of the inside gears and brushes of these tiny potentiometers. __ Contact David Cook

Type 3-Solar Engine-charge curve differentiated - Charge curve differentiated (i. e. , it triggers when the charge rate of the capacitors slow down) -- These are theoretically the most efficient, though type 3 designs are still in their infancy. __ Contact Eric Seale